KEY TAKEAWAYS

Tesla ( TSLA ) stock is down around 17% this year, and its CEO Elon Musk is in the headlines—lately for how he’s leading the U.S. government's cost-cutting department DOGE rather than the EV maker.

The market’s worries that Musk has too much on his plate isn’t swaying long-time bull Dan Ives of Wedbush, however. Ives wrote in a note Monday that he is sticking with his outperform rating and $550 price target on his optimism around the company’s autonomous and robotics future. Wedbush has the highest price target on Tesla among analysts tracked by Visible Alpha.

“The worry of the Street is that Musk dedicating so much time (even more than we expected) to DOGE takes away from his time at Tesla in such a crucial moment and year for the company,” Wedbush analysts led by Ives wrote in a note Monday.

But, they noted, “Musk has always been able to balance his countless initiatives better than any other CEO we have seen."

Wedbush added that decline in demand in Europe and "pockets of the U.S." for Tesla vehicles from Musk’s DOGE-related “actions” and close ties to U.S. President Donald Trump is “containable" from a brand perspective.

Wedbush pointed to Tesla's upcoming vehicle and product launches for its outperform stance.

Among them: The EV maker is readying a new mass market vehicle launch in the first half of the year and announcing progress in its autonomous vehicles and its Optimus humanoid robots . Tesla is also planning to launch its first robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, which along with the launch over the next week of the updated Model Y, dubbed Juniper, will be the stock's next catalysts, the analyst wrote.

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